Red Hands
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: Sometimes you have to burn the house down and rebuild. Post 10x01, Mulder and Scully have a long overdue conversation.


**Happy 24th birthday to my beloved Lauralea. All she asked of me for her birthday was that I write her some revival pain so some revival pain she received. I don't know if it's the most painful thing I have ever written, babe, but it has to be close. I hope you enjoy it! The title comes from a song of the same name by Walk Off the Earth that I heavily encourage you all to listen to as you read as well as the song listed below as both heavily inspired this fic.**

 **Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours. Definitely Chris Carter's.**

* * *

 _And then brick by brick,_  
 _We watched that building fall,_  
 _And then I toiled and I slaved,_  
 _For months at a time,_  
 _Structured life from its foundation,_  
 _Crafted many a rhyme,_  
 _And I built you a home of beauty from the grime..._  
 _-_ John Black's _Six Lovers Deep_

* * *

Silence sat between them, heavy and pregnant; the words they left unsaid like a bullet in the chamber during a game of Russian roulette. The only noises that filled the small dining room was the gentle falling of rain against the window panes and the scraping of forks on plate as they dined slowly on their pasta. Dana Scully sat across from her partner, dinner and otherwise, wishing that he would just let her have it. If he would just unleash on her like the thunderhead had let go of the rain then she might be able to breathe but he just sat patiently across from her, sipping his wine and pushing marinara around with a piece of french bread. They were like two fronts on an inevitable path of collision and when they hit there would be chaos and destruction left in their wake.

"So," she began quietly as she reached for her own glass of wine. Taking a polite sip, she weighed her words carefully. "When we met with Skinner yesterday and he said that we were on thin ice, that any personal issues would have to stay outside of the office, you said that wasn't going to be a problem."

"Right," he agreed around a bite of pasta. "I can't imagine it will be. Is there anything we have left to fight about, doc?"

 _Everything_ , she thought. "No. Of course not. What could we possibly have left to fight about?"

"Don't do that," he told her and his voice took on that darker tone, the one he only used when she hit a nerve. "Don't do that thing where you say one thing but you really mean another. If you have something to say then say it, Scully."

She stabbed her fork into her pasta and lowered her hands to the table before raising her eyes to meet his as she let out a sigh. "Did you sleep with Svetta?"

 _Boom_. The first resounding clash of thunder as the two fronts met angrily.

His eyes narrowed at her as he cast his own fork to the side. "Where the hell do you think you get off, Scully? You _left_ me. You made it abundantly clear that we were over. We have been over for years. Who I sleep with is none of your damn business."

"God, Mulder!" She stood from the table abruptly and raked her fingers through her hair. "She's half your age, traumatized all to hell... You investigated her case when she was a child!"

"Which is exactly why I didn't sleep with her," he yelled back and then quieted. "Good to know your morals are still intact, Dana. You left me and ran straight into the arms of Kane!" She cringed at the name of her former colleague who had been completely swept up in her while she had found safety in him, safety in how just unlike Mulder he was. He was 'normal'. He had a family. A family he wanted her to be a part of. "Why did you say no to his proposal, Scully? You could have had it all – the 2.5 kids and white picket fence with him, at least every other weekend."

"You are such a bastard."

"I am," he agreed. "Now if I get no say in whose proposals you do or do not accept then you certainly have no say in my bed partners. Stop deflecting, Scully. Tell me what's really got you angry. Why are you trying so damn hard to pick a fight?"

She eyed him for a long moment, as if trying to gauge exactly where he was falling in that moment; he was on fire but it wasn't the fire that came from the paranormal, the high of a case. The fire burning inside him was the fire that only ever came when the two of them were gnashing their teeth, chomping at the bit to tear one another apart. When nothing else in their relationship seemed to work they could always count on their ability to fight; they would burn everything down if they had to and rebuild. There was one wound they had left to fester for far too long, the one fight they had continually put a pin in for fifteen years, and time had long since come to confront the demon. They hadn't talked about it, about _him_ , really discussed him since those brief moments on the floor of his cell all those years ago and they had both been too distraught to really comprehend their actions at the time.

"Why don't you hate me," she asked him softly as she crossed her arms over her chest and dropped her gaze to the floor for a moment before glancing back up at him. His features had softened at her words and he was pushing back from the table, as if he wanted to comfort her but she the look in her eyes kept him at bay. "For William. Why don't you hate me for giving up our son? The only chance we have ever had for a child and I just... I gave him away. I gave him up. I should have protected him! I should have been able to keep him safe! And I just gave him away. Why don't you hate me? I hate me."

He was out of his chair then and in front of her, sinking the fingers of one hand into her hair as he wiped at her tears with his thumb. "Why don't you hate me for leaving then? I hate me for leaving. If I hadn't left you... If I had stayed I could have protected you both. Or I could have brought you both with me. By leaving, leaving you defenseless and struggling to make sense of who our son was, I forced your hand."

"I should have protected him," she protested.

His lips pursed as he hesitated for a long moment before leaning in to press them gently to the skin just above her brow. "I should have protected you both."

"They would have killed you," she told him as her hand came up to scrape over the stubble on his cheek, unsure if she was anchoring him to her or pushing him away. A shiver chased down her spine as she remembered the pain that had settled in her chest when she heard of his execution order (the way the last bit of hope in her entire being had shattered). "Or we would have spent his entire childhood on the lam and that's no life for a boy, having to be afraid of every noise he made."

"And those things wouldn't have happened if you hadn't given him up later," he countered. "You were giving him his best chance, Scully. His best chance at a normal childhood. We'll always love him. We'll always wonder about him. And it'll always break my heart that I couldn't protect you both, couldn't keep him with us, but he gets his best shot at a normal life being with parents other than us. You did what a mother was supposed to do, Scully. You protected our child. I could never hate you for that."

"Sometimes I just wish like hell you did," she told him on a stuttering sigh. Her trembling hands found purchase on the swell of his biceps and she anchored in, linked herself to him to keep herself from toppling over from the torrent of emotion pouring out from her in that moment. "If you hated me then maybe I could hate you too. This would be so much easier if I didn't love you so... so _fucking_ much. Too much."

"I'm sorry," he breathed into the fraction of space between them; his words honest, bare and earnest. "I wish that you hated me... I wish I could make this easier on you. The burden you carry for my sake is one I never wished for you. And now you're chasing after monsters in the dark again and I can't help but realize that it's my fault, that I once again have led you here to this."

"You didn't lead me here, Mulder." Her grip on his arms softened ever so slightly and she rubbed her thumbs over the inside of his arms – less anger in her touch, less frustration, and more a resignation of love. "The monsters in the dark are my demons to face as much as they are yours. I asked for this, didn't I? I don't want you losing yourself in all this, to slip further down the slippery slope you're already on, but then I ask you to run headlong into all of this. I want to protect your heart but then I ask you to jump on a grenade to protect mine. How fair is that?"

"Hey." His right hand moved to cradle her jaw in their awkward embrace and he tilted her chin so she would look him in the eye. "You never have to ask me to do that; I'll always do whatever it takes to keep you safe." He would always carry himself as her armor.

"And I, you." She would always carry herself as his armor.

His lips lowered to hers as she rose onto her tiptoes to meet him halfway; a soft brush of skin on skin, a ghost of what they had previously been but the spark of what could unfold flickering between them. They couldn't be together, not in that moment for a multitude of reasons, but hope still burned ever true between them. A hope that someday they could be more than the broken bits they were composed of; hope that, when all the monsters had been defeated and sun broke through the storm clouds overhead, they could be together once again and better than they had been before. Together they had reached the end of their ghost story; a light had been shown on the shadows in the corner and they had confronted it together.

Standing in the rubble, the ashes of their burnt down house, they could take survey of the damage done and begin the slow process of rebuilding once more – this time everything truly reduced once more to rubble. His mouth moved from her own to her forehead as he pulled her into a tight hug and she could finally breathe with the air between them washed clean like the atmosphere after a brutal storm. They swayed ever so slightly in their embrace, the half-step of an unplanned dance as they let the quiet sink in once more but instead of heavy and heady with everything they had left unsaid for far too long it was light and airy with freedom and acceptance.

Leaning back from the embrace, she offered him a watery smile in turn for the lack of physical contact. On a brave note, she leaned in and brushed her lips across the stubble of his jaw and reveled in the shivering of his skin under her own as her left hand came down his arm to find his right as she laced their fingers together. A soft, open mouthed kiss to the shell of his ear she breathed against the impossibly soft skin. "I love you, Mulder."

"I love you," he countered with his mouth at her temple.

They couldn't be together and they knew it; they were both still too broken, to damaged from their prior acts. Maybe, someday, after they had filled in the cracks in their foundation and cleared away the ashes then they could begin to build their home, their lives together, once more – together this time, hand in hand, completely in step with one another.

With hope and understanding in her piercing blue eyes, she rocked back on the heels of her bare feet to look up at him. "Partners?"

His gaze searched her own, as if to confirm this was what she truly and completely wanted, before he nodded slowly twice. Once more his mouth found hers in a chaste kiss that served as a contract, a promise. He would always have her back just as she would always and forever have his. She pressed up into the touch and his hand curled at the back of her head, keeping her there on the tips of her toes as he leaned over her in the bit of space they occupied in her dining room as their dinners congealed on her plates. He pulled back from the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. "Partners," he agreed. "Until the wheels fall off."

She nodded in agreement. "Until the wheels fall off."


End file.
